Choruses of UC Davis: "Sorrow and Joy: An American Story"
Nicolás Dosman, director
featuring the UC Davis Concert Band
Pete Nowlen, director
and Rollo Dilworth, visiting composer
If the American Dream includes hope of a better life in a promised land, then the story we tell must also acknowledge that dream has not always been equally available to all Americans. This concert gives us both sentiments of this “American Story.”
Rollo Dilworth set his choral and wind ensemble work “Weather” to the poem of the same name by Claudia Rankine. “Weather” (the poem) appeared in the New York Times Magazine shortly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It captured in a few pointed phrases the pain of the pandemic and of America’s racial conflicts. Using American-born musical traditions, including the Blues, Rollo Dilworth juxtaposes Rankine’s words against a musical fabric, which challenges us to accept this part of our American story, and in time weather that challenge.
André Thomas, a composer known around the world for his spirituals, wrote his “Mass of Love and Joy” (filled with moving and joyous spirituals) in 2018 upon his own retirement, and which concludes and lifts up this choral concert. Thomas says of his work, “anyone can relate to spirituals. Everyone goes through trials and everyone looks for comfort.”
Program
Chamber Singers
Norman Dello Joio: A Jubilant Song
Samuel Barber: Agnus Dei
William L. Dawson: Soon-Ah-Will Be Done
Concert Band
Selections to be announced.
— Intermission —
Combined Choruses
Rollo Dilworth: Weather
with the UC Davis Concert Band
and Shinae Kim, piano
“Historically, the arts have always fulfilled the dual roles of responding to change while at the same time creating change. Claudia Rankine’s poem, Weather, is a poem that gives voice to the voiceless, especially those who have been and continue to be marginalized because of difference. It responds to and reflects realities that are both culturally specific and humanly universal. Claudia Rankine challenges all of us (no matter your background or lived experience) to know better, to do better, to take action, and to become agents of social justice and social change.”
—Rollo Dilworth
André Thomas: Mass of Love and Joy